The Corpse of Room 196
by LyingToYourInstincts
Summary: In an alternate universe, Angel works as a housekeeper for a dinky hotel. One night shift in particular, he finds himself in the middle of what he can only interpret as a murder scene. After the police do nothing, he is compelled to investigate the matter further himself.
1. Angel

Angel and his cleaning cart shuffled along the blue-grey carpet in a very humble and diminutive fashion. The door to his left marked his 16th room of the day, his final stop before this shift's cessation. With one swift and abrupt knock, the man quickly determined the room's vacancy, which gave him the implied consent of entry.

But some rooms you are better off not entering, and Angel quickly found this to be the case of room 210. Discarded fingernail clippings littered each surface, and the employee counted at least 3 used condoms in the far-right corner. There was even more to be said for the bedsheets, which contained more mysterious stains than there were letters in the alphabet. These stains varied significantly in color, shape, and size, much like human beings. But Angel had never seen a human being anywhere near as hideous.

As he scrubbed, replaced, and aimlessly searched the grungy hotel room, Angel wondered how he had gotten to this place, both mentally and physically. He wondered how he had gotten to be so dull both in mindset and occupation, and he wondered how much more mindless scrubbing and bleaching it would take to get rid of the red ringlets around the quaint shower/bath combo.

 _ **How many times are we going to have this exact line of thought? We could package and sell your mopeyness and make twice as much as you do working at this dump.**_

Angel smiled as he wiped.

"Do you have any better topics in mind? Anything cheerier I should let simmer in my brain while I wipe excrement from floor tiles?"

Though it is impossible for a disembodied voice to smile, Angel felt this must be exactly what she was doing. He reached for another paper towel, but in finding none, settled for a well-loved cleaning rug.

 _ **I just might. But what's the fun in just telling you?**_

He was about a hundred harsh wipes in before deciding that these bathroom hieroglyphics were a lost cause. Angel scanned his work, inwardly contemplating whether or not his hopeless attempts would be rewarded with a scolding. It wasn't as if he couldn't get another job, but there were certain conveniences that came with this gig. Not to mention the excruciating effort it would take on his end to so much as apply anywhere else.

 _ **You've become lazy.**_

Angel began to gather his things and return them to their grey/blue shelf, his semi-stocky body languidly leaning in different directions so as to ensure he grabbed as much as possible with the most minimal amount of movement.

"You're killing me Buff," Angel teased, eyes scanning the room one last time before flicking the final switch. He closed the door quickly, not wanting to be left alone in the dark.

 _ **Which do you think is worse for your health; an intangible brain buddy, or your inability to put forth any actual physical effort?**_

Angel was grateful to her for not targeting his squeamish reaction to the split-second of hotel room darkness. He wished that he could be as selectively blind as his friend, but he was cursed with a tragic case of dwelling, among other things. He lowered his voice now. Though there were no visible passerbys in the hallway, he still thought it better not to risk causing any potential guests discomfort.

"Please just tell me what you were thinking of. It's been a long day, I could use the distraction."

Either teleporters were a thing, or Angel hadn't properly scanned his surroundings. A scrawny woman pulled her child closer upon seeing him, a grown man, dressed in all black and speaking to himself. He tried to shoot her an apologetic glance, but she had already sped down the burgundy hallway, dragging a very confused little boy by his tiny grimy fingers.

Taking pity on his humiliated state, Buffy threw the towel in. Angel could feel the smile again, though it remained impossible to put into words how such a sensation could be known and labelled. He had what was practically an entire filing cabinet worth of Buffy reactions, but the smile was by far his favorite. He considered for a moment, how lucky he was, but the feeling of partial bliss was immediately replaced by a state of curiosity. He "listened" intently, as his perky friend began to speak.


	2. Faith

"You look happy."

Angel thought back to what Buffy had been telling him, and his smile widened.

"I guess I am."

"Well, it's weirding me out. Drink?"

Angel raised an eyebrow at her, casting a very accusatory glance. He may not have been the most shining example of straight edge sobriety, but even he was certain that the phrase "cold turkey" implied total alcoholic abstinence. Faith flashed her best puppy-dog eyes, just before wandering back into the kitchen. "Joking! It was a joke! Geez, you'd think Mr. Smiley would have a better sense of humor."

Angel knew it was unfair of him to be so amused and delighted by every quip Buffy threw his way, and then turn around and give Faith hell over even the most minor of infractions. But he couldn't help it. She needed him at his strongest, and his strongest took the very suggestion of relapse (or any other kind of danger) very seriously. He could hear his brunette roommate rummaging through their fridge with a bizarre amount of ferocity, in stark contrast with the way Angel was known to do things.

He had always known that she was very energetic, but even after years of living together, he didn't get the urgency with which she destroyed his culinary space. Was it so hard to silently search a refrigerator?

Faith reentered the living room with a fresh can of coke, slumping down on the ugly green couch with an equal amount of intensity. The landlord was likely to come scold them for being so loud when committing "hanky panky" any minute now.

Faith snapped the tab off of her can, sending it skittering across several inches of carpet.

"You're bleeding."

Faith shrugged, sticking the bloody digit into her mouth and sucking all the red away. She proudly displayed a now slobbery thumbs up when finished with this task.

"Yuck."

 _ **You think of yuckier every time you go to yoga class.**_

"That's irrelevant," Angel retorted, before realizing it had been Buffy speaking to him, and not his greasy-haired roommate.

Faith cocked her head at him.

Angel and Buffy had a sort of agreement that she not pester him when he was with Faith. He knew it made her jealous to see him live with someone that wasn't herself, though she would not dare to admit it. And beyond that, it was just plain dangerous. Angel liked to treat Buffy like the person that he saw her to be, which meant if possible, he would reply to her out loud, as opposed to sending a single thought her way. In a pinch, he could chat her up in silence, but on instinct, when she talked to him, he talked back.

It was just far too risky to expose Faith to the "hearing voices" side of Angel, they had both agreed to that much. But it was easy to forget, especially when the two of them were so infatuated with each other's company.

"What's irrelevant?"

Angel only shook his head, taking the coke from her blood-free hands and stealing a sip for himself. "Just something I thought of earlier."

Faith stared him down with those baby browns, expecting his face to give away what his mouth would not.

"You're acting strange today…Did something happen?"

"Nothing happened." _And nothing ever does._ "And what's got you in such a good mood? There's no boytoy to be found."

Faith scoffed. "I could say the same for you."

"I'm bisexual, not promiscuous."

"And what's the harm and being both?" Faith left him with this thought as she made her way to the bathroom, though he did not accept it as his own, like he would have if it were Buffy's suggestion. Angel had other things to prepare for, things far more vital than a cornucopia of lovers. Though he did not know it yet.


	3. Riley

The next night Angel found his particular splurge of rooms to be taking a significantly lengthy amount of time. He was uncertain as to whether or not this was because of his alleged increasingly lethargic state, or if the rooms were just unusually mucky today. It was also possible, of course, that he was distracted.

Maybe it had been Faith's words which had stuck to him, despite how much he had attempted to shake them off. After all, having a voice wasn't the same as having a girlfriend.

 _ **I heard that.**_

Angel wheeled his way over to room 196, a room that he usually had no trouble with. Perhaps it was because it was most often occupied by the higher class of bums, due to the select amenities which could not be found throughout the rest of this hallway. Whatever the reason, a sense of relief always washed over his body the minute Angel saw those three digits in that one order. And today was no exception. If anything, he was more ecstatic than usual, given how dreadful his first two rooms of the day had been. He needed a break.

 _ **Maybe you can date this door. You're certainly drooling over it.**_

Angel couldn't help but notice the increased hostility on Buffy's end, which was yet another mess he would have to clean today. This increased his longing for Room 196, a hyperbolic godsend in these tense times. However, the longer Angel dwelled on his craving for simplicity, the more hesitant he was the turn the handle. He needed this room so much, that he wasn't ready to clean it. In cleaning it, he would have to finish cleaning it. And in finishing cleaning it, he would have to leave.

 _ **Open sesame?**_ Buffy remarked, seeming oblivious to Angel's current train of thought. Perhaps she was far too busy conducting her own.

Despite the equally uncertain and belligerent state of his mind maiden, Angel interpreted this line of questioning as the encouragement he had needed. So he put on his game face. And he opened the door.

Instead of the warm and scarcely occupied room which Angel had expected, he found himself facing a visceral hellhole. The first thing he heeded was the scent. There was a pungent foulness to the room, so vibrant that Angel nearly puked upon the mere aroma. In addition to the sour and decaying meat smell, there was the mingling of a certain sweetness, as if one had sprayed fruity perfume to mask the scent of the roadkill they had just used as a toilet.

Gulping dramatically, Angel took a step inward. Sometimes puking your guts out was the sacrifice that must be made to get the job done. Buffy on the other hand, was less than enthusiastic.

 _ **What are you doing?**_ She declared, so panicked that Angel himself winced at the "sound".

"My job," the stoic man replied, as he took yet another step forward.

 _ **Angel,**_ she persisted, _**you need to look down.**_

The words were more irritating than anything else. Of course, he would have to eventually look down. That was how he would clean the floor. Did she think he had forgotten? Still, to amuse her, he obliged.

The instant his eyes met those of the deceased, he felt the murky fluid gliding up his throat. Incapable of restraining himself or his liquids, the vomit slid out of his body unchallenged. As a former alcoholic, Angel was used to the sensation of puking. He knew how it felt to have hot and frothy gushing out of you, burning and scratching up your insides. He was however, not used to having the chuck he had upped defile a dead body.

 _ **I tried to warn you.**_

Angel wiped at the corner of his mouth. "Vaguely so. And would you mind a little compassion, Buff? I think I'm having a mental breakdown."

 _ **You need to get out of here. But first, you need to breathe.**_

Angel chuckled, though his chuckling quickly mutilated itself into a string of coughs and gags. "Breathe," he said, "what's that?" He lowered himself to the body, for no reason he could now or later name. But if he was going to see, he was going to see it all.

 _ **What are you-Ew. Stop it. Stopitstopitstopit.**_

"You don't have to watch, but I'm curious."

 _ **More like psychopathic.**_

Angel's breathing hitched again, and he felt his stomach jump dangerously close to his neck.

 _ **This isn't me agreeing with your actions, but if you're going to play detective, you need to stop lingering on the grotesque. You haven't eaten enough to be puking all that you've been puking.**_

He nodded wordlessly, looking in the opposite direction this time. There was no need to dwell on the grisly, the numerous indentations, the pooling ichor. The single eyeball, implying that another human being had reached deep into the left socket and curled their twisted little fingers around the gelatinous blob of-

 _ **There's no point in not looking if you're still going to let your mind run off like that. Just how masochistic are you?**_

Angel's mouth was too filled with vomit to conjure up any sort of response.

 _ **Listen to me. This is nothing, okay? A manikin. Better yet, a movie prop. Nothing worth looking or thinking too much about.**_

Again, he wiped at his mouth, as if he could wipe away all he had seen and known in these past five minutes. He flicked the grey-ish greenish gunk off of his hand, and knelt in front of…in front of something.

 _ **Good boy. Now, what are we doing?**_

"Looking for identification." His voice was still unsteady, but he was doing well, considering all that had befallen him. One large hand rifled one side of the object, while the other analyzed its opposite. His right hand at last settled on a fat brown wallet, complete with driver's license and credit cards.

He focused his eyesight on the rectangular contraption, as opposed to the subject which he was holding it over.

"Riley," he read aloud, "Riley Finn." He blacked out approximately one second later.


	4. Andrew

"I'm just saying that I know what I saw."

Faith kicked her feet back, her mud ridden doc martens now hanging of the arm of Angel's semi-expensive couch. Putting her legs so high up made her back point downward at an angle opposite to the one her feet and the couch end had created.

"Let's say for convenience's sake that I do believe you, so what? You saw a body, passed out, and when you came to, it was Houdini. You can't exactly hand over stinky air to a forensic scientist, and you can't blame the pigs for not believing that something had been where nothing now was."

Angel knew that Faith was right, at least for the most part. For all he knew, he could have bottled air particles, but the fact remained that he hadn't. The police had blown him off, and an entire day had passed. There was nothing left for him to do. However, this did not deter him from feeling significantly troubled over the entire ordeal. He had never seen something so gruesome before, unless you counted his reflection after a hangover. And maybe he was letting a hyperactive imagination get the best of him.

 _ **You didn't make this up. You shouldn't throw away your heroic enthusiasm just because some slob who wasn't even there tries doubting you.**_

But what was Angel supposed to do about it? Right or wrong, the fact remained that this was currently out of his hands. Something spectacular would have to happen in order for this to once more become his problem.

Noticing his blatant lack of answer, Faith began to nag at her companion once more. Her shoes danced just off the edge of the arm.

"You have work today, right?"

It was with a stagnant hesitation that Angel began to reenter the premises. He looked at those numbers with imploring intentions, but 1, 9, and, 6 all kept their lips sealed shut, as shut as the door to the room of the dead. (Which was now the door to the room of nothing, he had to keep telling himself that.)

He had done his signature knock at least a minute ago now. And still he stood here, a statue of fear and anticipation. Whose body would it be this time?

 _ **It's bound to be yours if you don't get back to work.**_

Angel cracked his knuckles individually, each joint resounding louder than the last. "Remind me never to get hired by you."

 _ **You should be so lucky.**_

The anxieties that had previously pressed his person seemed to melt away sheepishly whenever Buffy spoke. It was like magic, the way in which she could ease and console him without so much as laying a hand on his physical form. How could one person be so much of nothing and still mean everything?

With this newfound reassurance Angel found that he was capable of anything and everything, so opening the hotel room door was a mundane feat. Unfortunately, her words had done nothing to prepare him for the vision he would see next from his perfect placement at the now ajar doorway.

Two bodies, pale as moonlight. It wasn't that Angel was uncomfortable with nudity, moreso that he was uncomfortable with the total nudity of strangers.

To be fair, he wasn't exactly being handed the entire Greek figure. The lights were off, and one man was in prayer position. The other faced away from him and therefore only revealed back and buttock alike. And of course, the almost silver-blond of the back of his head. It took them a split second to realize the door was open, which was a split second of Angel seeing an activity that he had not wished to see.

The first to realize, of course, was the figure on the floor. His eyes shot to the size of sausages and he quickly pulled back, stumbling over himself to find a blanket for his body. "Bloody hell," the other exclaimed, as he too came to this realization. Being less modest, he opted to clap two hands together and whirl around in his makeshift thong.

"Don't they teach you Americans how to knock?!"

Angel's brow furrowed. "I-I did?...I- "

"C-C-an you even form a proper sentence? Jesus, the help has downgraded at this dump."

Realizing the two were going to have a conversation as they were, the other man had cast aside the blanket and went into the restroom with actual clothes. When he came out, the two strangers were still staring at each other, ping-ponging waves of awkward and anger to one another. The fully clothed man made the wild internal assertion that these two would be like this for quite some time, and the wilder assertion that this whole situation was too much drama, even for him.

"You'll call, right?" Somehow even in full attire, he was still shyer then his lengthy blond partner.

The naked one sighed. "Yes Andrew, I'll call." His voice was much softer when he spoke these words, even though they were obviously untrue.

Andrew beamed, shuffling past Angel's broadness with a renewed look upon his face.

Apparently not so obvious. It wasn't until he disappeared down the hallway that his lover once more began to speak.

"Now…where was I?"

This was Angel's chance to verbally renew himself, to de-clumsify this situation. It was unlike him to be so awkward and so mistake prone, and this…twink? needed to know that. On top of that, clearing up the situation would ensure that his ass wasn't grass to the building manager.

"Ah, that's right." The man took a step forward. He slammed the door shut.


End file.
